FourKites releases capabilities to manage demurrage and detention fees

March 1, 2022

By Transport Intelligence

FourKites has introduced several new capabilities aimed at helping international shippers identify and mitigate the risks and costs associated with runaway demurrage and detention (D&D) fees. FourKites’ new demurrage and detention capabilities help shippers more quickly and proactively identify potential D&D fees; prioritize exceptions according to likely business impact; and proactively adjust carriers, lanes or other factors as necessary.

Port congestion, vessel delays, and incorrect or incomplete documentation are common challenges for ocean shippers. Unprecedented global container shortages, port closures, natural disasters, COVID-19 and other recent incidents have exacerbated these issues. D&D fees have reached thousands of dollars per container per day and millions of dollars in annual transportation costs for many shippers, recently prompting the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to consider new regulations to reign in ocean carrier billing practices.

FourKites’ new demurrage and detention product suite is available as part of the company’s Dynamic Ocean platform, which includes end-to-end freight tracking, predictive ETAs, international document management and booking functionality. The new capabilities include:

• Exception dashboards, notifications and alerts that monitor and track containers that are likely to incur D&D fees based on real-time rerouting alerts and dwell time data for all ocean shipments. Using these real-time dashboards, customers can prioritize the containers that are currently accumulating fees, or that are at risk of doing so.
• Analytics dashboards that scrutinize performance trends by lane, carrier, stop and other factors to pinpoint systemic problem areas.
• Ability to monetize the potential (and actual) financial impacts of demurrage and detention fees on transportation costs, enabling shippers to prioritize the most costly cargo.
• A digital document hub to manage essential international shipping documents, with collaboration tools and customizable workflows, alerts and notifications to mitigate shipping delays and unnecessary D&D fees.

“Detention and demurrage fees have become a scourge for shippers, and when piled on top of rising transportation expenses, can make profit margins plummet,” said Chris Stauber, vice president of products and international solutions at FourKites. “Attacking D&D fees requires a true end-to-end visibility solution that combines document visibility, yard visibility and robust notifications and alerting so shippers can mitigate fees before they occur. That’s Dynamic Ocean in a nutshell.”

FourKites’ Dynamic Ocean platform addresses the full spectrum of ocean shipping issues through advanced document management and collaboration features; real-time tracking capabilities, including predictive ETAs that are reportedly 20% to 40% more accurate than carrier-generated ETAs; and multimodal visibility from port to door, including the yard, so shippers can identify and manage the root causes of escalating fees.

Within the context of ongoing volatility and rising costs in ocean shipping, FourKites has experienced dramatic growth in its ocean business since it introduced its state-of-the-art Dynamic Ocean platform.

Over the last 12 months, ocean volume tracked on the FourKites platform has increased 232%, while ocean customers have increased nearly 4X over the same period, including Cardinal Health, Arizona Tile, LyondellBasell, McCain Foods, Roehm, Rove Concepts and Yamaha Motors. Dynamic Ocean covers 98% of global ocean shipments, 100% of terminals in North America, and the majority of terminals in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.

Source: FourKites